Editor's Note

The Charge

Where the only rule is…an eye for an eye!

The Case

If Nietzsche built a pinball game, it would probably look something like
Savage Streets. This Reaganactionary vigilante romp is a sleaze classic,
thanks in no small part to its leading lady, the lovely Linda Blair, but even
beyond the charms of the one-time Regan MacNeil and Sarah T., there's plenty of
trashy goodness to be had here.

We open with a scene of Blair's girl-gang parading around the streets of
L.A. Most of the "girls" are done up like newly-single middle-agers
prowling Vegas; I was genuinely stunned to later learn they were high schoolers.
Along for this walk of shame is Heather (Linnea Quigley, Silent Night, Deadly Night), a
deaf-mute, and the sister of Brenda (that's Blair!), the nominal leader of the
ladies.

Also out on this night—though driving, not walking—is a quartet
of freakshow boys led by psychotic, razor-blade-earring-wearing Jake (Robert
Dryer, Kiss Daddy Goodbye). These boys are looking for trouble (or
something), and they find it when they almost run over deaf-mute Heather! Well,
this gives them trouble, all right, when the girl-gang later punks them by
trashing their car.

All this gang prankstering is enjoyable enough, but let's not forget that
the film is called Savage Streets, not Juvie "Gotcha" Games
Streets, and the payback for the car trashing is a fortuitous doozy: the
boys show up at the high school that Heather and Brenda attend (along with
gang-boy Vince, who's played by Johnny Venocur, who grew up to be Scott Baio's
best friend). They happen to find Heather all by herself in an empty gym, while
Brenda is duking it out with a rival (and several naked, over-age co-eds) in a
nearby locker room. There's also a conveniently empty bathroom nearby, where
they drag poor Heather for some assaulting. In the universe of rape revenge
movies, these guys are second only to the cretins from I Spit on Your Grave in the dumb-luck
department.

And, like the idiot rapists from ISoYG, these guys are also headed
for a bad end—but not before they commit yet another atrocity!

Savage Streets is quintessential '80s exploitation trash, enjoyable
in a grisly and shameful way; but even for a film of this ilk (and really,
Savage Streets is more an "ilk classic" than a "genre
classic"), the gratuitousness is disturbingly high.

The faux gritty sensibility—as exemplified by its power/street pop
score—flags high, but the film, for all its silly swatches of violence and
nudity, is also an awfully disjointed affair. Subplots float freely like gaseous
balloons, occasionally touching down and then drifting off; characters drop in
and out, sometimes for no apparent reason and without introduction or closure;
the homoerotic subtext in the guys' interactions is almost startling, but it
barely plays out; and virtually every female character gets a topless scene,
even if those scenes occasionally feel shoe-horned in. Even as a
rape-and-revenge feature, there's a lot of extraneousness, to the point that by
the time the revenge part kicks in, you might have to think back to exactly what
started the whole mess in the first place.

Blair, who went from teenage Oscar nominee in the '70s to B-movie goddess in
the '80s, overall does well here, though it's hard to buy her as a high school
student. Quigley endures a dreadful rape scene with aplomb, Dryer makes for a
wonderfully creepy bad guy, and Venocur brings a surprising amount of charm as a
gang-banger in training.

A few years ago, BCI Eclipse put out what might have been considered a
definitive edition of Savage Streets—good tech, awesome
supplemental package. Unfortunately, BCI went under not long after, so that disc
is out of print. Evidently, Scorpion bought up some of the BCI titles, because
they're re-releasing discs that had been part of the BCI library. Scorpion's
release includes all the supplements of the previous disc, plus some new
interviews, PLUS a new transfer.

The new transfer looks pretty solid; no 30-year-old exploitation film is
ever going to look stupendous, but this certainly looks cleaned up, with minimal
nicks and flaws. The Dolby mono soundtrack is clean and clear, pretty much all
you could ask.

The supplements start with three commentaries ported from the BCI disc: one
with director Danny Steinmann; one with producer John Strong and actors Johnny
Venocur and Robert Dryer; and the third with cinematographer Stephen Posey,
along with Dryer and actor Sal Landi. Listen to these in their entirety, and you
get a fascinating—and, occasionally,
"Rashomon"-like—portrait of a troubled B-movie production. This
disc also features "Vintage Interviews" (that is, ports from the
earlier disc) with Strong, Venocur, and Dryer. Also, since this is a Katarina
Leigh Waters Scorpion disc, you have the option of watching the film in
"Kat Scratch Cinema," which means intros and bits of trivia from
Waters.

A second disc contains a whole passle of interviews, some old, some newer,
and ones from Dryer and actor Scott Mayer were recorded at Monsterpalooza in
2012. The rest are with Strong, Landi, Venocur, Blair, and Quigley. This is an
all-around strong presentation, and the new "definitive" edition.

The Verdict

It's been a while since I've seen a Scorpion disc. This rendering of
Savage Streets is a great reminder as to why they are one of the better
purveyors of low-budget, oft-forgot sleaze and horror.

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